Fear of a Silent Mind
by Mandarin Fiend
Summary: Edward and Alice's parents are murdered by a creature whose thoughts he couldn't hear. When Bella Swan moves to town he is immediately suspicious of her silent mind. AU, but Edward is still telepathic and Alice can still tell the future.
1. Chapter 1

Edward jerked out of sleep so violently that he rolled right off his bed into the floor, a tangle of gangly limbs and sweaty sheets.

He sat up, disorientated and terrified. His heart was pounding in his throat. He forced himself to take a calming breath and quiet his mind.

Behind his eyelids all he could see was a dark figure crouched over his parent's bed, draining his mother's life force through her neck. His father was glassy eyed and motionless beside them, his pajama shirt drenched in glistening blood. His neck was crooked at an odd angle.

Once he was able to focus, he realized the terror he was experiencing wasn't his own, it was his sister's. Through her mind, he saw the creature fling aside his mother's lifeless body and lumber out of the room towards the stairs.

He was on his feet and running to her room as fast as his legs could carry him.

He flung open the door seized Alice by the shoulders, shaking her hard, as the monster in her dream stopped outside her bedroom door.

"Wake up! Alice, wake up!"

As she regained consciousness her thoughts were a quivering mess of fear, and flashes of blood red eyes.

She burst into tears and Edward allowed her to throw her arms around his waist and sob into his shoulder even though the noise it made in his head was deafening. People's thoughts were always magnified by touch.

Edward tried to scrape together a mental shield little success. It was flimsy at best.

"Edward, I-I don't think it w-was a dream," Alice whispered.

"Shh, of course it wa-" Edward cut off mid-sentence as his father's mental voice screamed in his head effortlessly breaking through his frail mental shield.

 _GET YOUR SISTER EDWARD, GET OUT OF THE HOUSE. THERE'S SOMETHING HERE._

He'd never heard his father panic. His father had also never outwardly acknowledged his mental quirk, and they'd never communicated like this. Edward opened his mind fully and let his ability flood the house.

His parent's minds were in their room where they usually were. His mother's mind was asleep, her thoughts a cacophony of bright colors and movement, but his father's was in a state he'd never felt before. The edge of his father's usually solid presence was shuddering and undulating, like someone was tickling it, or molding it like clay. He could tell by the mental flavor that it was his father, but there were no thoughts.

Then Edward felt ice slip down his spine as he registered a third presence just outside the room, _hovering_ by the window. He heard his father's voice murmur something indistinguishable, and at the same time the words appeared in his father's head almost like someone else was writing across the inside of his skull.

 _Please come in._

Edward strained his ears and heard the latched window in his parents room scrape open.

Alice suddenly grabbed his arm and in her thoughts he saw himself hurtling back to his room, grabbing his baseball bat, charging into his parent's room. The creature would look up as he entered; it's eyes deranged and mouth smeared with blood. He would charge, bat raised over his head, an anguished scream torn from his lips.

The bat would splinter to pieces over the creature's body, and as it rose off the bed, he would notice with horror that he was too late, his mother's cream silk pajamas were stained red and she lay in the corner of the room unmoving, glassy eyes staring at nothing.

His father was still on the bed, neck twisted unnaturally.

The monster would consume him, and then it would hunt for Alice, and the four of them would be dead.

Alice took her arm off of his and they stared into each other's eyes solemnly.

"Alice, run now to the pool house and barricade yourself inside. Call the police," whispered Edward furiously.

He pulled her to her feet, out of her room, and pushed her towards the front door.

 _But Edward! You saw what will happen! You can't!_ screamed Alice's voice in his head.

He didn't care. He couldn't live with himself if he didn't at least try to save them.

Just like in the vision, he sprinted back to his room and grabbed his baseball bat, before sprinting up the stairs to his parent's room and wrenching open their door.

He was too late; his parents were just as they were in Alice's vision. The creature was even more terrifying in the flesh. Its pale skin glittered in the moonlight. Edward couldn't read its thoughts, but he could tell where its mind was. It felt like a writhing pit of venomous snakes, convoluted, twisted and _evil_.

Then he was screaming and charging, swinging wildly. The bat splintered to pieces across the creature's back.

In a movement that was quicker than a heartbeat the creature had him by the throat, pinned to the wall with single freezing cold hand.

Its blood red eyes seemed to stare into his very soul, and then he felt a nudge at the edge of his own mind.

 _Relax, this won't hurt…_ something whispered in his mind in a voice as smooth silk. Involuntarily he felt his muscles unclench, the handle of the splintered baseball bat fell from his nerveless fingers. He felt his head tilt up, exposing the column of his neck to that red gaze…

As he grappled mentally in vain for the will to struggle, Alice's thoughts permeated the thick fog clouding the edges of his consciousness.

She had crept into the room.

"I r-rescind your invitation," she intoned shakily. The effect was dramatic; the creature was pulled off Edward and flung violently across the room and out of the window by some invisible force.

Edward regained control of his limbs and gasped for breath. Without missing a beat Alice grabbed his arm and with strength that belied her slight frame, hauled him to his feet and pulled him out of the room.

 _The cellar_ she thought at him. He caught a vision of the two of them barricading themselves in.

They stumbled down the stairs as quickly as possible. There came a crash from somewhere outside the house.

Alice gasped and stopped moving abruptly as another vision flooded her.

The creature was going set their house on fire.

"Alice! That's enough!" Edward shook her desperately in an effort to snap her out of the vision of the two of them writhing in fiery agony in their barricaded cellar as the creature outside looked on indifferently.

She snapped back to herself and slumped into Edward's arms, sobbing uncontrollably.

"W-we're g-going to burn," she choked.

"No we _aren't_ ," growled Edward, casting around wildly in his head for something they could he realized it was obvious.

"I've got a plan. Go to the downstairs bathroom and fill the tub with water," he said authoritatively with a lot more confidence than he actually felt.

Alice stilled for a second and fleetingly caught a glimpse of the two of them gasping for breath outside of their house underneath a broken window. There were sirens in the background and the house was engulfed in flames.

She took a deep breath and straightened her back.

"Alright," she intoned.

Edward headed in the opposite direction to the telephone while crashing and thumping sounds continued come from outside.

He dialed and waited impatiently for an operator to pick up.

" _Nine-one-one what is your emergency?"_

"There's someone outside my house trying to set it on fire!"

" _What is the location of your emergency?"_

Edward was momentarily distracted by sudden the absence of sound from outside, had the creature given up and left?

"We're at-" suddenly he heard an almighty crash and the line went dead. Edward uttered a low oath, his mind working furiously to figure out what to do next, and then he remember his father's work cell phone. But where was it?

He sprinted to the kitchen to see if it was sitting on charge. It wasn't.

He quickly rerouted and found his father's briefcase on the side table by their front door. He emptied the whole thing out but there were only paper documents.

That meant that it must be in their room on the bedside table.

Edward forced himself back up the stairs and with shaking hands and found himself paused on the threshold, struck anew by the horror of the scene. Swallowing back the bile rising in his throat, Edward crossed the room quickly the snatched up the phone from where it lay.

He couldn't help by look at his mother as he left; her cream silk pajamas where luminescent in the moonlight.

His eyes filled with tears, blurring his vision and against his better judgement he found himself walking to her and kneeling beside her prone figure.

"I'll look after Alice mom," he whispered. He laid his shaking fingertips against her eyelids and gently closed them.

He stood and tried to look at his father to say a last good bye, but the unnatural angle of his neck was too much, there was a bone protruding, and Edward found himself on his knees retching. He knew he had to get moving, had to call again, had to get down to Alice, but even as the quiet crackling sound of flames replaced the crashing and thumping outside, he found himself unable to stop dry-heaving.

"Edward…" it was Alice. She crouched beside him and laid a hand on his back. He managed to calm himself enough so that he was just sobbing uncontrollably. He couldn't remember the last time he'd cried.

She took his hand and he blindly followed her out of the room and down the stairs.

They got to the bathroom and got into the tub and sat in cold water side by side.

Edward registered that Alice had the cell phone and was talking to someone. He heard through her thoughts that the operator had taken the liberty of searching their address with their phone number, and that a fire engine and police officers were already on their way.

The operator told Alice to get out of the house. She replied that they were in the downstairs bathroom unable to leave.

They huddled together as the sound of fire got louder and nearer and smoke started to seep in under the door.

Very soon Edwards could feel the heat and see bright light dancing through the gap between the door and the floor.

He numbly registered the sound of sirens in the distance. He felt the twisted mind of the creature outside become colder and somehow more negative, and then it was moving away. A short while later Edward could no longer register it's presence.

The room was really filled with smoke now, and both Edward and Alice found themselves in a frenzy of coughing.

It was time to leave.

Edward's eyes were watering from the smoke and he could hardly breathe when he stood up straight so he couched low and felt his way up the wall to where the window was.

He reached around blindly for something to break the window with, and found his hand closed around their metal waste bin.

It took two good shoves before the glass gave way.

He grabbed Alice's hand and helped her climb out the window before pulling himself up and allowing gravity to do its job as he tumbled out bonelessly. Alice was lucky he didn't land on top of her, and they were both lucky it wasn't a very far drop.

They both breathed in fresh air like people in a desert drinking water after days without, before staggering away from burning heat of their home and collapsing side by side on the lawn.

They saw a fire truck make its way up the driveway followed closely by several police cars.

 _What are we going to tell them?_ Alice thought. Her question was accompanied by the salient points of what would happen if they told the truth.

They'd both be declared mentally unsound and Edward would be tried as an adult for the murder of his parents and arson. He would either spend the rest of his life in prison, or in a mental facility for very dangerous people depending on if he wanted to plead insanity or not.

"How about the truth… minus the unbelievable bits?" suggested Edward between labored breaths. Alice concentrated for a moment and their futures cleared up somewhat. Neither of them would be sent to prison or institutions. She caught a glimpse of their kind uncle Carlisle on a plane, his usually serene visage marred by worry and fatigue.

Edward grabbed Alice's hand and she squeezed his back.

"We'll be okay," he murmured.

Tears ran silently down their faces as they watched their home burn.

 **I've never written a twilight fanfic before. What did you think? :)**


	2. Chapter 2

_I'm walking home from the grocery store. The sun has just gone down, and there is a light breeze, cool against my skin. When I try to put my key into the lock, the front door swings inwards. It isn't all that strange for our door to be unlocked, and Renee and Phil's cars are both in the driveway so they must be home._

 _I enter the house, and then I hear a strange sound. It sounds like… a gurgling slurping sort of sound. Like when you've finished a drink but you keep sucking on the straw anyway._

 _I walk towards it._

* * *

Charlie Swan did not believe in magic, or aliens, or anything else that could be considered remotely supernatural.

His considered himself a realist at heart. He didn't even read fiction or watch movies that weren't set in the real world, preferring non-fiction books and documentaries.

This led to Charlie Swan developing a very strange relationship with the Masen twins when they moved to Forks after their parents died in a house fire.

He still remembered the first time he laid eyes on Edward Masen. He was just a boy, tall and lanky with angry green eyes.

Everything from his slouched posture to his tightly folded arms screamed defiance.

As the Police Chief of Forks, Charlie had dealt with his fair share of teenage angst episodes in his time. Everything from underage drinking to unlicensed driving.

He'd been called into the school because Edward Masen had punched his English teacher in the face seemingly out of the blue with no provocation. The teacher in question didn't want to press charges for some reason, but it was decided that an officer should be called in nonetheless to give the young man a talking to about the gravity of his actions.

Principal Wesley motioned for them both to step into her office.

"Alright Mr Masen, I've invited Chief Swan to speak to you about this incident," she said pinching her nose.

Dressing-downs weren't his forte so Charlie kept it quick and to the point.

"Alright son, you're a boy. I'm a man. We're both people, and people get angry, I get it. Here's the thing-" Charlie shifted forward in his seat to emphasise that what he was going to say was important, "-under no circumstances are you to _hit_ people when you get angry. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes sir. Crystal," Edward spat angrily.

"How old are you?"

"Fifteen."

"You won't be underage forever and if this happens again it could go on your permanent record. I hope you understand the gravity of your actions and that we never have to meet again under these circumstances."

"Do you want to know _why_ I hit him?" the question burst out of Edward, like he couldn't hold it in.

"There isn't any good reason hit to hit someone boy. But go ahead," Charlie figured that perhaps the kid would calm down once I got whatever it was off his chest.

"Mr Williams planted hidden cameras in the girls' locker room and he's making a killing selling the footage."

Charlie's first though was of Bella. She was about Edward's age. He imagined how he'd feel if Bella had a teacher that was filming her…

Edward had led them both, he and the Principal, directly to where the cameras were hidden.

"How did you know?" Charlie asked.

"Er, I heard him mumbling about it to himself," Edward replied not very convincingly.

The scandal of Edward hitting the teacher faded into the background once Mr Williams was fired and what he did became widely known.

In that instance, and in all future instances, Charlie would employ a sort of double think to deal with the inconsistencies that inevitably cropped up when dealing with the Masen twins. He would listen to what Edward and his sister Alice told him, then he would then act on what they told him, all the while completely ignoring and even denying to himself that anything strange or supernatural was going on, when it _clearly_ was. He didn't want to know, he was adamant he shouldn't know, so he forced himself not to think about it or acknowledge it very successfully.

This seemed to work for all parties involved.

Somehow Edward had shown up at Mrs Callahan's house, out of breath with a defibrillator clutched tightly in one hand, just as Charlie was knocking on her door in response to a distress call.

Mrs Callahan survived the heart attack.

Alice had called his home in the middle of the night and told him he was needed immediately on a bridge leading out to the Rez.

Sure enough, when he pulled up a man was fixing to jump, and Charlie managed to talk him down.

A child wandered into the wilderness around Forks and just as the whole town was gathering to go out and search, Alice and Edward walked out of the forest. Alice was holding a flashlight and Edward was carrying the little girl.

And then one fateful day about two years after they had first moved to Forks, Alice showed up on Charlie's doorstep with a plane ticket to Phoenix.

"What's this for?"

"For you. It leaves tomorrow morning at 6am. I'm so sorry I couldn't do more."

She turned on her heel and hurried away from him, and as Charlie stared at the ticket, he finally let himself wonder. 

**Reviews and speculation are appreciated :)**


	3. Chapter 3

_The sound is coming from_ _Renee and Phil's room._

" _Mom? Phil? You guys here?" I call._

 _Their door is ajar so I push it open._

* * *

The first day back after the holidays Alice had decided to walk beside him to school instead of catching a lift with Carlisle like she usually did.

Edward hated being in cars with other people, no room to escape their thoughts in a tiny metal box. Come rain or shine (it was mostly rain) he rode Carlisle's old mountain bike to school. On the occasions when Alice decided to walk with him he obligingly slowed down so her short legs could keep up.

He left his bike to the side of the school's main entrance. He never bothered locking it up, in a small town like Forks it wouldn't be stolen.

He could tell that the Forks student body was in uproar and he wasn't even properly inside the school yet, but then again the whole town had been simmering like this for a few months.

Ever since Chief Swan's ex-wife and her new husband had been violently murdered, it was all anyone could think about, and it seemed that today was the day the Chief's surviving daughter was to finally start school.

The excitement was palpable, boarding on hysteria, and Edward felt genuinely sorry for the poor girl. When he and Alice had moved here, Edward had migraines for days. He was glad he had better control over his shields now, because the excitement and speculation when he and Alice had arrived was _nothing_ compared to this.

Edward pinched the bridge of nose wearily and tried to visualise a brick wall between his own mind and the chaos of mental voices around him.

"You alright?" Alice asked him.

He tried to give her a reassuring smile but he could see in her mind's eye that it wasn't very convincing.

"Everyone is just really excited about the Chief's daughter," he grumbled. Alice zoned out for a moment and Edward saw a blurry image of the girl entering Mr Banner's biology class.

' _Only one empty seat left over there,'_ vision-Mr Banner said apologetically.

"Sorry Edward," said Alice.

He scowled darkly. He sat alone in all his classes for a reason. Firstly, he needed to keep his distance to keep his mental shields up. Secondly, there had been a few… _incidents_ over the years and no one was too keen to be near him.

They were known as those two weirdo Masen twins. No one said it to their faces, but of course they didn't need to speak aloud for Edward to know they thought it.

Edward was quiet and polite but had those crazy green eyes, and he could flip like a switch for no outwardly discernible reason. Edward personally felt that he had excellent self-control considering some of the things he heard. He tried very hard at first to fit in and seem normal with some success, but after punching Mr Anderson in the face… Well, there was no coming back.

No matter how 'normal' he managed to act everyone still remembered.

Alice was less scary, and was actually much friendlier; the green eyes set in her face looked less intimidating. However, she unnerved people with her blank spells of staring into space for minutes at a time, or sometimes saying the strangest, most perceptive things that tended to make people uncomfortable.

She once called Jessica Stanley at home just as she was about to leave for school to tell her to remember to turn off her hair curler. Sure enough, it was on.

They were by no means outcasts, they both got along well enough with most of their peers, it was just widely accepted that the two of them were a little eccentric, that that Edward in particular felt very strongly about personal space.

They got cut a lot of slack for their strangeness on account of their parents tragically dying in the 'house fire,' and their Uncle Carlisle being the kindest, most handsome, Doctor that had ever graced Forks. He was the fantasy of bored housewives all over town, much to Edward's disgust.

In his usual sickeningly good and wholesome way, Uncle Carlisle was obvious to this, too modest for his own good and too busy being immersed in his work.

His thoughts were just as kind as he was, and largely occupied by his patients; treatments and diagnoses and many long words that Edward did not know the meaning of.

Carlisle was one of those few people whose thoughts more or less exactly matched what he said aloud.

"Sup Masen!" Edward braced himself when he heard Emmett McCartney's voice and sure enough, Emmett flung an arm over Edward's shoulder when he reached him. He was only able to do so because although Edward was tall, Emmett was truly enormous.

"Good morning Emmett," said Alice, neatly sidestepping Emmett's other arm.

"I'll see you at lunch?" she said, waiting for Edward to nod before gliding off to homeroom.

"So listen, a bunch of us were going to go down to La Push this weekend to surf. You in?" asked Emmett in a sotto voice.

"It'll be freezing," Edward deadpanned, knowing it would be no use.

"Great! We're leaving at eleven and remember to bring a wetsuit. Catch ya later buddy," Emmett thumped him on a back in what was supposed to be a friendly gesture before taking off, no doubt to bother someone else.

Emmett was the quarterback and captain of the football team, one of the most popular guys in school, and one of the simplest and most straight-forward people Edward had ever encountered.

He also had no concept of personal space.

Just like Carlisle, his thoughts and spoken words always matched up.

Ever since Edward and Alice found Emmett's little sister after she wandered into the forest surrounding Forks, Emmett had sort of taken them under his wing and assumed a familiarity with them to which they were forced to acquiesce.

Emmett McCartney killed you with kindness and a dimpled smile that was incongruous with his hulking frame.

Edward managed to get to homeroom and sit in his regular seat by the window without being accosted by anyone else. He concentrated really hard on bolstering his mental shields while staring out the window.

He was much better at blocking than he ever used to be, it helped being around people all the time. The first day back after vacation was always the hardest because unless he was forced to work at it every day, his shields tended to slip.

He went on autopilot to his classes, took notes, and tried to ignore the voices in his head. Despite his best efforts, some things slipped past his shields.

Mike brushed past him in the hall and Edward got a very clear image of a girl with a heart-shaped face and long brown hair. The image was accompanied by a name, Bella. It was the Chief's daughter.

By lunchtime he could have picked her out of a crowd despite never having laid eyes on her himself.

He took a seat at his usual table where Alice was already sitting; making her way through the lunch she'd bought and chatting amicably to Angela about surfing. Edward liked Angela; she had uncommonly kind thoughts, and she bore Alice's exuberance with good humour.

Jessica Stanley arrived at the table and dropped her tray to the table with a clatter. She wanted their attention.

" _Oh my gosh_ , have you guys seen the Chief's daughter yet?" Jessica usually didn't sit with them, but she was thinking about how she'd seen Angela speaking to Bella outside English, and she was hoping for some gossip.

Edward tuned their conversation out by putting in some headphone and blasting Chopin's Waltz in C minor just shy of bursting his eardrums. It was the piece he was currently working his way through. He absentmindedly tapped out the rhythm on his leg as he visualised his fingering.

Alice had to nudge him to get going when the bell rang.

He started developing a headache during Government, and massaged his temples as he trudged along to biology.

He stared thoughtfully out the window at the cloudy sky as he waited for class to start. It looked like it was going to pour, but then again Alice wouldn't have walked with him to school if there was the slightest chance of rain.

He heard Mr Banner think his name; ' _Only seat left is next to Edward, nothing for it.'_

He turned to see Mr Banner directing the Chief's daughter apologetically to sit in the empty seat beside him.

She tripped on the way over but managed to catch herself on the edge of the table. She looked up at him through a curtain of brown hair and for a moment, they examined each other.

"Hi I'm Edward," he said blandly, trying to block out Mike Newton's thoughts on the view he had of her backside.

"Bella," she mumbled looking down. She allowed her long hair to fall like a curtain between them as she took her seat. She placed her books on the desk in front of her, pulled a pencil out of her backpack, and then sat very stiffly.

And to think he was worried when Alice told him he was going to be sitting by the new girl. She was quiet, and she had a quiet mind to match. He wasn't even exerting his mental shields that hard and he was succeeding in blocking her out.

In fact, since she sat down beside him the mental murmur of voices in his head had diminished significantly, along with the burgeoning headache from Government.

"Okay class today we're going to be covering mitosis-" for once Edward was actually able to pay complete attention to the lesson. Mr Banner lectured at them for a bit and then he had them turn their attention towards the microscopic slides in front of them.

"Shall I go first?" he said, pulling out the first slide and affixing it to the little stage on the microscope.

Edward looked up at her when she didn't reply. At his expectant gaze she nodded, but there was something brittle and not quite right about the girl.

Edward knew that there were many things not at all right about him after his parents died, and he felt a lot of empathy for poor Bella Swan.

She was very very pale with dark circles under her eyes that stood out in a stark contrast. Despite looking like she needed several nights good sleep, she was pretty, is a delicate breakable sort of way.

Sitting beside him, shoulders hunched, small hands clasped tightly together, she looked like a stiff wind would blow her away.

They completed the lab silently, only speaking when necessary, but it was a comfortable sort of silence. At least it was for Edward. Sitting beside her was the opposite of a headache, and he was sorely tempted to try and persuade her to sit with him and Alice at lunch the next day.

He was in the middle of daydreaming of things to bribe her with, (I'll buy you lunch, you won't have to talk at all, I'll make sure people won't ask you any questions, and I'll do all the work in Biology-) when his hand brushed against her and all his thoughts came crashing down.

Bella yanked her hand away quickly and went back to looking through the microscope, but Edward's mind was in turmoil.

When he touched her cold hand, he couldn't hear her thoughts.

To make sure it wasn't just chance that he'd touched her when she wasn't thinking anything, Edward deliberately brushed his hand against hers once more.

Nothing. She was completely silent to him.

Edward didn't say a word to her for the rest of the lesson. When the bell rang, he gathered up all his things and left as quickly as he could.

 **Well, I'm not sure that I'm completely satisfied with this. But it moves the plot forward so I'll post it for now and possibly edit it some more later. What do you think?**


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